Your Story is Powerful

     At the center of our faith in Jesus there is not a narrative about a triumph of ideas that compelled the world into believing. The impetus for people trusting Him is not force or coercion, no matter how much throughout history Christians have wrongly inflicted it. The heart of the Christian faith is a King who saves both the individual and the world by absorbing the horrors of sin and death, yet returning from death as a conqueror. Yet Jesus is not the conqueror of people, He is the conqueror of the things that enslave people. Our greed, self absorption, and distortions are the things Jesus defeated, as well as the spiritual powers that exploit these things to strangle creation. Jesus defeats the dark powers both externally and internally. He is still engaged in this work, and continuously liberates us from all things He sees as not His intention. The cross still kills, yet it is no longer the Savior it harms. The cross is now the power that kills the evil and crookedness in us. It is like a chisel that scrapes off the charred ash on the portrait God has made of us humans, exposing the beauty that was trapped under the layers of sin and death.

    The cross still scrapes us clean. It is not always fun, but it is liberating. It is very much as C.S. Lewis portrays it in his Chronicles of Narnia series where Eustace Scrubb succumbs to a curse that due to his greed, transforms him into a horrific dragon. Unable to speak with words, Eustace communicates with tears and gestures that tell his friends that he is trapped in a dragon's body. As he and his comrades realize that they cannot take Eustace with them on their maritime voyage in his dragon form, there is only one solution that comes. It is not Eustace's cunning or intelligence that sets him free. It is the sharp claws of the Christ figure in Narnia; Aslan the Lion, that rips off the layers of scales and dragon hide to get to the boy trapped inside. Lewis remarks that though painful, Aslan tearing off this dragon hide also felt good to Eustace. This is the work of Christ, He restores the humanity in us. It is not always how we envision being human, but it is instead how God sees humans truly looking like. The Bible presents a picture of humanity not knowing who they are anymore. Although we are supposed to resemble and reflect our Creator, we often look like the things that makes us thrive to the detriment of others. We become dragons in order to become powerful, affluent, or in control. Yet we no longer are human in the sense that God intends for us. We become horrific creatures like Eustace, and it takes the power of Jesus to slice through the false image we project that is not in communion with God. This is the power of the cross. God does for us that which we cannot do ourselves. 

    Every one of us who follows Jesus has a story of how He liberated us from something. These stories are at the true heart of the faith. It wasn't with superior arguments or moral teaching that we became Christ's own, instead it was Jesus and His power to set us free. It is the scandal of the cross, God becoming human to let humans in their dragon form kill Him. Yet the true scandal was that although in weakness Christ conquered the dragons we became, His power to conquer sin and death followed in His seeming defeat. The blood of God that we spilled also is the very thing that brought about our freedom. And likewise how Christ came back from death and ascended to become King, we also through the power of Christ ascend past the scarred forms we currently resemble. The blossom blooms again on the tree that was bare. Life comes from God's own death. We now have stories that stem from the story of all stories. It is God's own heart demonstrated through Christ that resides in the center of our lives. This is what marks us as unique and different. It is not arrogance or hubris that we now inflict on our society as a result of the cross. It is the story of God's humble love for us that we tell, gratefully and meekly. We have stories now, let us tell them and live them. Your story with God is powerful.